Amazon is famous, or infamous, depending on your point of view, for disrupting established industries. Now it is taking on the personal emergency response system (PERS) industry with a new Alexa service called Alexa Emergency Assist.
Alexa Emergency Assist is currently available to U.S. residents for $5.99 per month, or $59 per year. After January 8, 2024, an Alexa Emergency Assist subscription will only be available to Amazon Prime subscribers.
Alexa Emergency Assist incorporates features from the now-discontinued service Amazon Guard and new services that directly compete with those offered by the PERS industry.
From Amazon Guard, Alexa Emergency Assist subscribers gain the ability for the Alexa devices in their homes to detect when smoke alarms and Carbon Monoxide (CO) alarms are triggered and sound their unique alarm sounds. In these cases, homeowners, and people that they add to their emergency contact list, will be sent notifications of the event.
In direct competition with the PERS industry, homeowners that subscribe to Alexa Emergency Assist can say “Alexa, call for help.” They will then be connected to a member of the Amazon’s Urgent Response team, who can contact emergency services on the homeowner’s behalf, request the dispatch of emergency services personnel to assist the homeowner, and provide emergency services with critical information from the homeowner’s profile. People on the homeowner’s emergency contact list will also be notified when a call to Amazon’s Urgent Response team is initiated and when it ends.
However, PERS providers do offer a number of services that Amazon does not. Some of these services are fall detection, the ability to contact support personnel from outside the home, and a lockbox that provides emergency medical services personnel access to the home. However, all these additional services come at a cost. A PERS subscription with some of these added services can cost upwards of $50 per month, and possibly more.
It will be interesting to see how successful Alexa Emergency Assist will be. While anyone can be incapacitated by a fall and need help from emergency services, this new service is clearly targeted at the same senior population that subscribes to a PERS service. However, seniors may not be trustful of having voice assistants in their home. In addition, seniors may not have an Amazon Prime subscription because their volume of purchases doesn’t justify the expense. Only time will tell how successful Alexa Emergency Assist will be.
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